Arts & Mysteries: The Plane My Brother Is

Estate inventories of cabinetmakers’ shops often include hatchets. Likewise, most of the admittedly few images of period shops depict hatchets prominently. It could well be that these tools were used solely for the preparation of firewood. But the 15th-century poem “Debate of the Carpenter’s Tools” provides us with an important clue regarding the use of hatchets in period shops:

“The broad ax said without a miss,
He said: ‘The plane my brother is;’
We two shall cleanse and make full plain…”